The state’s water rights office says there is excess water – up to 1.13 million acre feet – going unused on the Kings River, which could open the system to a flood of water seekers. The Administrative Hearing Office (AHO) will hold a hearing Jan. 19, 2027 to delve into whether the Water Resources Control Board should revoke the 1967 “fully appropriated stream” designation on the Kings River. If that happens, it would open the river to new water permit applications, according to the AHO’s hearing notice. This all stems from a legal fight that started in 2017 when the the Semitropic Water Storage District in Kern County filed an application for Kings River flood flows. … Applicants had been battling it out through various AHO proceedings, with the last one held in 2024. So, the recent AHO notice came as a bit of a surprise that applicants said they were carefully sorting through.